{"id":714,"date":"2007-03-08T20:17:52","date_gmt":"2007-03-09T04:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2007\/03\/08\/fccindependents\/"},"modified":"2007-03-08T20:17:52","modified_gmt":"2007-03-09T04:17:52","slug":"fccindependents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2007\/03\/08\/fccindependents\/","title":{"rendered":"FCC\/Independents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The devil is in the details.\u00c2\u00a0 If you doubt me, you&#8217;ve never been screwed out of royalties by a major label.\u00c2\u00a0 OOPS, major labels don&#8217;t PAY royalties.<\/p>\n<p>Which is why indies are flourishing.\u00c2\u00a0 They&#8217;re absent the bullshit of the old system.<\/p>\n<p>So why do the indies want to fuck with terrestrial radio?\u00c2\u00a0 Try to turn back the hands of time and level the playing field when the grass is dying there and growing elsewhere?<\/p>\n<p>The big decision this week wasn&#8217;t about the FCC mandating that terrestrial radio stations play independent music, but the new Net radio royalties.\u00c2\u00a0 Oops, the indie labels are getting paid there, so maybe that&#8217;s why they&#8217;ve been silent so far.<\/p>\n<p>Funny about the indie labels.\u00c2\u00a0 They really want to be just like the majors.\u00c2\u00a0 They&#8217;re envious.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead of thinking about their ADVANTAGES, they&#8217;re constantly crying for a level playing field.\u00c2\u00a0 Like IMPALA.\u00c2\u00a0 What a fucked up group that is.\u00c2\u00a0 By merging all their properties the majors are going to CREATE OPPORTUNITIES for the indies.\u00c2\u00a0 But instead of seeing this, IMPALA is trying to hold back the hands of time, keep themselves imprisoned.<\/p>\n<p>The majors&#8217; stranglehold was distribution.\u00c2\u00a0 That&#8217;s now been broken.\u00c2\u00a0 But don&#8217;t tell IMPALA.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, are the IMPALA guys positively OLD SCHOOL?\u00c2\u00a0 Not realizing that to profit in the future you&#8217;ve got to be more of a manager, participating in all revenue streams?<\/p>\n<p>Indie music on terrestrial radio.\u00c2\u00a0 Isn&#8217;t that the opposite of the desire?\u00c2\u00a0 Isn&#8217;t that like Top Forty music on free format FM?\u00c2\u00a0 Why not let the majors ghettoize the terrestrial stations, which are losing listeners, and dominate THE NEW SPHERES!\u00c2\u00a0 Talk to satellite, they have trouble being served by majors, supposedly there aren&#8217;t enough listeners, not enough money.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a natural niche for indies.\u00c2\u00a0 But no, they want to fuck with the majors.<\/p>\n<p>Let me ask you.\u00c2\u00a0 If a major lends a band funds and only agrees to sign them if they sell a million units is the act a major or an indie?\u00c2\u00a0 If a label is wholly independent, but all its profit goes to the major, is it a major or an indie?\u00c2\u00a0 I could go on and on all day, but if a major wants to start a band it&#8217;s EASY for them to categorize the act as indie, to gain advantages.<\/p>\n<p>Kind of like Ozzfest.\u00c2\u00a0 HOW exactly is this free?\u00c2\u00a0 What happens when demand for tickets outstrips supply?\u00c2\u00a0 There are some pretty devilish details that Sharon Osbourne is not revealing.\u00c2\u00a0 Or could it be that Sharon is being a humanitarian, trying to help new bands she has no financial interest in, trying to give something back?\u00c2\u00a0 BULLSHIT!<\/p>\n<p>You don&#8217;t win by trying to change the rules of the old game, you create a NEW GAME!<\/p>\n<p>When the NFL wouldn&#8217;t create new franchises, fat cats built the AFL.\u00c2\u00a0 That may have been almost fifty years ago, but the point remains the same.\u00c2\u00a0 If the deck is stacked against you, don&#8217;t whine, don&#8217;t try to rejigger the system, build your own, with ITS rules.\u00c2\u00a0 The oldsters won&#8217;t be paying attention, and when they finally come to the party you&#8217;ll make a deal on YOUR terms.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a golden age of music.\u00c2\u00a0 With everybody able to produce and distribute.\u00c2\u00a0 But these mini-fat cats, who&#8217;ve been in the game for eons, are using the changed reality as an excuse to get back at dying dinosaurs.\u00c2\u00a0 They should be ignored, their efforts should be laughed at.\u00c2\u00a0 Like you want to deal with the old tastemakers, who are sold out whores no matter WHOSE music they play, when you can go directly to the fan on the Net?\u00c2\u00a0 You want to argue about consolidation when you can&#8217;t get paid for acquisition of your product ANYWAY?\u00c2\u00a0 CD sales are down in both the MAJOR and INDIE spheres.\u00c2\u00a0 But rather than worry about this, independents are trying to get on stilted, dying, terrestrial radio.\u00c2\u00a0 Create something FANS want to spread, don&#8217;t worry about trying to impress fortysomething programmers who may no longer take cash for airplay, but will be beholden to those who DO offer something.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the big indies won&#8217;t fuck with the little indies?\u00c2\u00a0 Like we&#8217;ve got a new equitable world?<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly, when nothing is stopping innovation, independent labels want to redraw the rules on the old map.\u00c2\u00a0 Utterly amazing.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The devil is in the details.\u00c2\u00a0 If you doubt me, you&#8217;ve never been screwed out of royalties by a major label.\u00c2\u00a0 OOPS, major labels don&#8217;t PAY royalties. Which is why indies are flourishing.\u00c2\u00a0 They&#8217;re absent the bullshit of the old system. So why do the indies want to fuck with terrestrial radio?\u00c2\u00a0 Try to turn [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-bw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}